The 'Spirit of St Louis' was the book that inspired me to follow a career in aviation. Lindbergh's nav was by dead reckoning and he admitted that there was an element of luck in his coasting in over SW Ireland just a few miles from his plan. I was saddened in later years to learn of CL's more unpleasant character flaws.
From 'Handling Light Aircraft':
4.17.1 Function of elevators
We have seen that the elevators can be used to make the aircraft adopt and maintain any desired pitch attitude. In practice, the attitude is chosen to achieve either one of two purposes, depending on the phase of flight. They are:
(a) to control the vertical flight path of the aircraft, such as during level flight;
(b) to control the IAS, such as during climbing and descending flight.
In case (a) of course, IAS is controlled by engine power setting. In case (b) the engine power setting determines whether the aircraft climbs, flies level or descends.